as gently you breathe as you ebb and you flow
by Terapsina
Summary: After escaping from some vampires that have been encroaching on Raphael's territory, Clary and Izzy take shelter on an abandoned fishing boat. They spend the night patching up a knife wound and sharing a very small mattress to sleep on. And maybe put a stop to dancing around some truths while they're at it.


**Disclaimer** : Not mine. Like at all. And I'm not making money from this, hell I'm barely getting a response from this, so there's no need to sue me. Thanks.

 **AN** : Three eternities ago (or 3 months depending on your pov) rustypeopleskillz sent me a prompt reading: 'Clizzy, patching each other up after a rough hunt.'

And now I actually wrote it. So, I'm really REALLY sorry it took me this long but I hope that it's better to get it late than never. And it doesn't follow the prompt entirely but it does the gist of it I think.

*o0O0o*  
* **as gently you breathe as you ebb and you flow** * **  
***o0O0o*

"Shit!" Clary hisses as Izzy pours alcohol over the open wound on her side.

This has not been her best day. Certainly not her worst either but that says more about the kind of days she's gone through lately than it does about this day in particular.

It started out well enough. Her and Izzy getting a mission to check out the rumors about a new clan of vampires encroaching on Raphael's territory, to make sure the city wasn't in for a clan war.

And what with Clary having been looking for excuses to spend more time alone with Isabelle these past few weeks, seeing one land in her lap was great.

Getting kidnapped by said clan and relieved of their angelic artifacts was less great. Escaping might have made up for it if a thrown dagger hadn't cut open her side as she swerved to avoid a direct hit, especially because their steles were still being held by their former kidnappers.

"Sorry," says Izzy and starts rifling through the first aid kit they found when they came across the rusty fishing boat abandoned on the docks "it needs to be disinfected."

"I know." Clary says, her hands clenching around the moth eaten mattress under her.

"Hold on, this is gonna hurt." Izzy says and Clary grimaces at the sutures and tweezers in Izzy's hands. "Whoever this place belongs to seems to have used up all the pain meds."

"Gimme that then." Clary says, gesturing at the bottle holding the liquid that just scorched like hot acid against her skin.

Izzy takes a sniff of the alcohol and grimaces a bit.

"Your funeral." Izzy says but hands it over.

"Ha, ha." Clary says utterly deadpan but finds herself smiling tiredly a bit when Izzy grins at her. Then she takes a swallow of the liquid and almost chokes on her own tongue. "What the hell is this? Pure ethanol?"

"Whisky. And pretty close I think." Izzy says and puts her fingers on either side of the four inch long gash across the side of Clary's ribs. Clary swallows down a whimper by gulping down another few mouthfuls and the taste gets so overpowering she feels her tongue dying. It almost distracts her as Izzy puts in the first suture. Almost.

She's really regretting not going back for those steles.

"Magnus would be horrified." Clary gasps out as the pain reaches its crescendo and Clary lets go of the mattress to grasp for a more stable connection to keep herself conscious. Being unable to take Izzy's hand she lands on her shirt and feels the muscles now under her fist contract against the contact.

Izzy's hands however never waver in their movement.

Clary spends the next five minutes blinking drowsily and observing as Isabelle's blood covered hands stitch her back together. If it didn't hurt so much it would almost be nice, she thinks she could stare at Izzy's hands forever.

* * *

Clary wakes up what feels like a minute later, but as she sits up she notices a ratty blanket sliding off her bare shoulders and revealing that a gauze is now covering her wound. The instruments for their small impromptu operation seem to have been packed away too.

She looks around for Izzy and finds her on the other side of the boat, sitting asleep, her back against the wall.

She pulls herself up and with her hand putting pressure against her side stands up. She looks around, thinking. Izzy can't possibly be comfortable sleeping like that, but Clary doesn't want to wake her before getting ready an alternate place for her to sleep.

Clary wasn't the only one who got banged up during their escape, she was just the only one bleeding.

She shivers and looks around for the jacket Izzy helped her pull off her shoulders after they broke onto the boat. The shirt under it needed to be cut away to access the wound and even with the blanket, being in just her bra has left her chilly. The blood loss probably doesn't help much.

She finds it on the ground by the bed, and sees why as soon as she picks it up. There's a hole in the side, which wouldn't really be an issue under the circumstances but its left side is also covered in blood, still wet enough to be gross.

She sighs and drops it back to the floor.

Then she looks back to the bed and grimaces at the same blood covering the mattress. She grimaces again as she bends down to flip it over.

"If you pull those stitches I'm going to kill you." Izzy's sleepy voice interrupts her before she can do more than grab it.

"Izzy! You're awake." Clary says, turning back around.

"Yeah and you should still be resting." Says Isabelle, getting up on her feet and immediately proceeding to start trying to massage the presumably painful kinks out of her neck.

"So should you, and I don't think the wall was really helping you all that much there." Clary answers with a raised eyebrow, daring Izzy to argue. "So how about you come over and help me flip this over so we can both take advantage of an actual bed."

"I don't think that thing really counts as a bed." Says Izzy but comes over and helps Clary turn it on its clean side. Or at least on the less bloody side.

"Pretty sure it's still better than the floor."

"Yes, which is why you're the one who's taking it." Izzy agrees and takes a step away like she's about to go back to the other side of the boat. "You were stabbed, you need rest."

"I was grazed," Clary argues and shoots out her hand to grab Izzy's "and we can share."

"I don't think we'll both fit," says Izzy.

Clary looks at the bed and has to admit the size of the mattress doesn't inspire great confidence in a very comfortable night. They'll probably have to keep their arms around each other if they don't want one of them to fall off.

She swallows and thanks all her lucky stars that there's only one small light-bulb for illumination, because she feels a flush traveling up her chest and rising to her cheeks. Only in lighting this bad could Izzy be unlikely to notice.

"We'll fit," Clary says "and you need rest too."

* * *

As Clary predicted she has to keep her arms around Izzy's chest. They're both sleeping on their right sides. And at Izzy's insistence, with Clary's back being the one facing the wall, both so that she's less likely to be the one to fall and so that she doesn't have to sleep on her injury.

But that also means she was the one who was left stressing out over where to put - or not to put - her hands.

In the end Izzy put a stop to Clary's fidgeting by taking her hand and entwining their fingers.

And now Clary feels little puffs of air tickle against her arm with Izzy's every breath, raising goosebumps all across the skin.

She doesn't know when she started falling for Isabelle. It might have been at any point from when they crashed together their foreheads, and one of the hundred little moments they've shared since.

But she remembers when she realized she was full on gone for her.

And it shouldn't even have been that big of a deal. There was a stretch of downtime after their final defeats over Lilith and then Asmodeus, as the demon population of the Shadow World seemed to have went into some kind of hibernation mode.

And bored, Clary spent a lot of time hanging out sketching in the armory while Izzy was busy in her position as Weapons Master. They would inevitably end up talking about nothing and everything while doing their own things.

Clary barely even took notice of how two times out of three she'd end up just sketching Izzy.

Izzy leaning over the table, eyebrows drawn in concentration over a malfunctioning seraph blade. Izzy's hands as she carefully picked apart a stele for a cleaning. Izzy smiling over her shoulder at Clary as she was telling some amusing story about her brothers when they were growing up.

In a few months her sketchbook was filled with portraits of Isabelle. And one night as she was going through the pictures, looking for her best ones, and absently listening to Izzy humming along to a song on the speakers, the penny finally dropped.

Clary was in love with Isabelle. Had been for a while now. She loved being around her, loved spending hours just talking to her, got excited on the rare recent occasion when there was a mission and it was her and Izzy who were sent out to deal with whatever was going on. It was Izzy she went to when everything got to be too much and she just needed someone to hug her.

She always kept a snack with her in case Izzy's sugar cravings struck her and made sure to find a quick way to distract her from getting sucked into the black hole of thoughts for their cause.

That revelation was a few weeks old now. The Shadow World was rapidly pulling itself out of its strange down time and demonic activity was picking up to the usual levels again. But Clary still had absolutely no idea what to do.

She knows she should just come out and say it.

Logically she understands everything would work itself out even if Isabelle didn't feel the same. She knows she wouldn't lose Izzy over this, whatever the outcome.

And yet the words just wouldn't come.

* * *

The second time Clary wakes must be at least a few hours later because she feels much better rested.

And a lot more parched.

But at least she's warm. As she opens her eyes and starts taking notice of the placement of all her limbs, she feels another blush coming on with the speed of a train.

She's wrapped around Izzy like a koala bear. Both arms around Izzy's stomach, clutching her flush against her. Somehow one of her legs has slid in between Izzy's. And she can't exactly extricate herself without waking Isabelle, because with the way they're currently sleeping the attempt would absolutely push Izzy out of the bed to fall to the ground.

Which means she has to wake her up and deal with the awkwardness.

And of course, she's still only in her bra.

"Izzy?" Clary whispers. "Wake up!"

"Five more minutes." Izzy says, clearly still half asleep and voice hoarse.

"You're going to fall off." Clary says and involuntarily pulls Izzy even closer.

Izzy hums and starts stretching out, making Clary panic momentarily at the sensation of Izzy's scantily clad back sliding against Clary's naked stomach.

"Izzy!" Clary tries again, voice a pitch higher and heart beating rapidly against her rib cage.

That finally seems to wake Izzy up because she too finally freezes in place at their position. Then she starts giggling.

"What?" Clary asks, exasperated.

"Who knew all I had to do to get you into bed was escape some vampires and spend the night in a dirty, old fishing boat while we wait for the sun to rise?" Isabelle answers and short circuits Clary's brain.

"What?" She says again, blinking rapidly to kick her head back into gear.

"Scoot back a bit." Izzy says and maneuvers around to face her as soon as Clary does so. "I've wanted to make out with you since the moment I met you. And if I've been reading you're signals right I'm pretty sure you've finally caught up with me. So..."

And then Izzy falls silent, the look in here eyes belaying the surety in her voice. She looks vulnerable and uncertain and a little bit afraid.

Clary can't stand to see that expression a moment longer so she leans forward and kisses her.

The kiss is slow and stretched out and absolutely perfect.

Her side is pulsing painfully, she's pretty sure there's a bit of blood in her hair and she's almost thirsty enough to try salt water, yet somehow she doesn't think she's ever felt quite as happy as she does right in this moment.

Which of course means the moment gets immediately cut short.

"Izzy, if you made us worry about you guys the entire night to make out with Clary, I'm going to put that in my report to the Clave." Comes Alec's voice from the entrance to the little room of the boat they took shelter in.

"Get out, Alec." Isabelle says not even looking over and leans back to kiss Clary again, despite how Clary had frozen up as soon as she heard Alec start speaking.

"Wait," Izzy says, seeming to think it over and pulling back again to correct herself "leave your stele and then get out."

"And water." Clary croaks out, pretty sure this time Izzy can actually see the blush.

"Right. Stele. Water. Then get out!"

*o0O0o*

 **AN2** : I'm not sure how much i'll write for Clizzy in the future because going by responses I'm not sure if I'm actually getting the characters down as well as I do for some of my other ships, which kinda makes me feel kind of like I've failed whenever I post for them and that affects my mood when writing my next fic.

I did enjoy writing this one (though the 3 month delay probably makes that seem unlikely), so I'm hoping you enjoyed it too.


End file.
